Francis Galton was born on February 16, 1822, in Birmingham, England.

He was an English explorer, anthropologist, and eugenicist known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. He was a child prodigy, reading by the age of two, learning Greek, Latin, and long division by the age of five and by the age of six he had moved on to adult books, including Shakespeare. Galton attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, followed up with mathematical studies at Trinity College, University of Cambridge (1840-1844). He was an enthusiastic traveller, making trips through Eastern Europe and the unexplored parts of Africa which made him win a silver medal from the French Geographical Society for his pioneering cartographic survey of the region, and the election to the Royal Geographical Society in 1850. He wrote a book on his experience, "Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa" (1853). He made important contributions in many fields of science, including meteorology (the anticyclone and the first popular weather maps), statistics (regression and correlation), psychology (synaesthesia), biology (the nature and mechanism of heredity), and criminology (fingerprints). He was the general secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1863-1867), president of the Geographical section (1867, 1872), and president of the Anthropological Section (1877, 1885). He studied the inheritance of nobility and talent which led him to his best-known book, "Hereditary Genius" (1869), and a later book "English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture" (1874). In "Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development" (1883), Galton coined the term eugenics, which would come to be his legacy. He devoted the latter part of his life chiefly to propagating the idea of improving the physical and mental makeup of the human species by selective parenthood. He was knighted in 1909.

In 1853, he married Louisa Jane Butler (1822–1897). He died on January 17, 1911, in Haslemere, Surrey, England.